Toledo, Ohio, has voted to grant human rights to Lake Erie.

I hope the article misrepresents what has actually been decided. I am in favor of strengthening laws to protect Lake Erie (and all lakes) from pollution, including helping more entities sue polluters. But not by descending into nonsense.

This law, as described in the article, is nonsense. Treating a lake as human is even more absurd than treating a corporation as human. A corporation does have preferences, and can make decisions — all actually decided by its directors and stockholders — yet still does not deserve human rights. A lake is unable to desire or decide anything, or consent to anything, and it has no chance of ever being able to do so. A human in such a condition would have its life support switched off.

To defend the idea of rights for humans (and other comparable intelligent beings), and to defeat the idea that a corporation is as good as a human, we must not go around according the status of human to mere things.